Atrum Veneficus
by DarkLordErebus
Summary: After Sirius' death, Harry spirals into depression, but he comes out of it a changed person.


**Atrum Veneficus Book 1**

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

The mind can be a dangerous weapon. That is something people often overlook in times of war. Indeed, sometimes the best weapon is a few well-placed words to damage the psyche. This was something that Harry Potter knew well. It seemed he had not gone a single year in his life without some form of mental and usually physical scarring as well.

For you see, Harry Potter was no ordinary 15 year old. He was a human with the innate ability to perform what many would call miracles, or in other words, a wizard. However, even for wizards, he was unique. You see, when Harry was a one year old, an evil wizard by the chosen name of Lord Voldemort ambushed his parent's house and killed them with a dark curse. He also tried to kill Harry, but for whatever reason, the killing curse he used, Avada Kedevra, the one that no one had ever survived, rebounded of young Harry, leaving only a pale, thin lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. The rebounded curse, unfortunately for Voldemort, was sent straight back at him, weakened. It destroyed his body, leaving him little more than a wraith, a parasite, forced to live off of others to interact with the world. A very embarrassing situation, one might have thought, for the dark wizard, and you would be right. From that day forth, Harry Potter was hailed as the 'boy-who-lived', the saviour of the wizarding world.

Now, you may be asking how any of this could have given Harry any mental scarring. Well, it most likely started when an old light wizard by the name of Albus Dumbledore, left Harry with his closest living relatives, the family of his mother's sister. However, Albus made 2 mistakes that night which could very well have been his undoing in the future. The first was leaving young Harry on the doorstep of his aunt's house. Luckily for him, the boy did not die of pneumonia, and was found by one Mrs Petunia Dursley the next day, when she went to fetch her milk from the door. The second one, the one that would come to haunt him in his later years, was assuming that young Harry's relatives would take care of the boy. Oh no, that would never happen. For Petunia and her husband Vernon were against anything not classified as normal by the standards of society, and as you can imagine, a wizard is most definitely NOT normal for them. So, young Harry was given a room in the cupboard under the stairs, while his cousin Dudley had 2 rooms all to himself. Young Harry was treated like a slave, being forced to do all the chores possible every day, and cooking every meal since he was 4. If anything was ever done wrong, he was locked in his cupboard for up to 2 weeks without food, and occasionally, without water. His magic did his best to sustain him, but he still ended up as a very malnourished young child. If he ever did anything 'freakish' (see. Accidental Magic), he was beaten for hours straight before being locked in his cupboard for months at a time, receiving water and a stale slice of bread about once a week. All in all, it is safe to assume that Harry did not have the greatest of lives with his relatives.

When he reached his eleventh birthday, Harry finally found out he was a wizard. Imagine his joy as he realizes that he could leave his non-magical (muggle) relatives and got to a boarding school for most of the year, where he got to learn magic! Of course, he did not realize it, but this was the first of many seeds in his mind that would lead him down his path. In his mind, wizards instantly became better than muggles, after all, it was muggles who had made his life hell for the last 10 years, and in his young mind, he applied his relatives personalities onto all muggles, and the kindness of the half-giant who had come to collect him, Hagrid, onto all wizards. It was something so small at the time, no one, not even Harry himself, noticed.

After a trip to Diagon Alley, where Harry learned he was very rich indeed, got all his school supplies, learned that not all wizards were complete angels, as he had met one Draco Malfoy, he went back to his relatives, knowing that he would be severely punished because he had left with the half-giant. He was not disappointed, and when he got back, he was beaten within an inch of his life, and then thrown into his small cupboard, where he silently cried.

Luckily for him, that part of the summer ended quickly, and soon Harry found himself in King's Cross, looking for platform 9¾. It was there he made his first wizard friend, a young redhead called Ron Weasley. They spent the entire train ride to the school together, talking and eating sweets. This was also the first time Harry met Hermione Granger, whom at the time he thought was a very annoying know-it-all.

Soon, Harry was at the sorting feast, where he, Ron and Hermione were all sorted into Gryffindor.

It was from this point where Harry started to get scarring from Hogwarts as well.

A rivalry had formed between Draco and Harry, and so Draco challenged Harry to a duel at midnight, in which he actually tricked them and sent Filch the caretaker to get them in trouble instead. Running from Filch, they came across a locked door, which Hermione opened with a spell, and hid from the caretaker. After a few seconds however, they realized what was on the other side of the door.

A Cerberus.

With all three of its heads trained on them, they scrambled out of the room, and run straight back to the Gryffindor common room. Hermione had noticed that it was standing on a trap door, and Harry, recalling the grubby package Hagrid retrieved on their visit to Gringotts, believed that to be what the dog was guarding. After lots of research, they found out that the item was most likely the Philosopher's Stone, something that could turn base metals into gold, and let the user live forever. During a detention in the forbidden forest, Harry came face to face with the shade of Voldemort, and only barely managed to escape. Soon after, Dumbledore left the castle, and the three, suspecting that that would be the night Voldemort went after the stone, followed him through the obstacles. At the last obstacle, only one could go through, and after a teary goodbye from Hermione, Harry went off to face Voldemort. After the shocking revelation that the person after the stone for Voldemort was Professor Quirrel, and that Voldemort was living of the back of Quirrel's head, Harry defeated Voldemort again and saved the stone.

This sort of thing happened every year, wear Harry was placed in life-threatening situations, usually with Voldemort trying to kill him, and expected to come out perfectly fine. In second year, a basilisk controlled by a memory of Voldemort, now known as Tom Marvolo Riddle. Third year, an escaped convict and a werewolf. In fourth year, the Triwizard Tournament, and just a few weeks ago, Voldemort himself, after a prophecy in the Ministry of Magic. It was then that the closest person Harry had to a family member, his godfather Sirius Black, his father's best friend, was killed, falling through the Veil of Death. Harry had been in mourning for weeks now, Sirius' death finally breaking through to his soul, sending him spiralling in depression, not allowed to leave his abusive household because of the flimsy protections that stopped Voldemort or his death eaters from getting to him.

It is here that our story begins.

AN: This is my first story, and I would love criticism of my writing.

Thank you,

DarkLordErebus


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